Retired Staff Sgt., Colleen Bushnell of the USAF delivered an impassioned response to Fox News commentator Liz Trotta. As you may recall, Trotta suggested “that women who defend this country should expect to get raped” when serving in the military.

Ms. Trotta’s detractors have continued to call on her to apologize, and on Fox News to fire her. What is clear to many female military sexual trauma survivors is that Ms. Trotta’s attacks, at core, stem from her belief that women should not serve in the military at all…

Did you really have to go there, Ms. Trotta? It is time for you, and others of your mindset, to join the rest of us in the year 2012 to recognize what women have been doing in the military for decades.

Bushnell goes on to describe personal trauma that she has endured while serving in the military. She speaks to Trotta from experience, then states:

With these circumstances as my truths, Ms. Trotta, I hear you. However, it is ludicrous to revisit an argument decided on more than thirty-years ago, beginning with the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948, which granted women permanent status in the regular, and reserve forces of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force.

Women are here to stay. It is time for you to get with the program. Women constitute about fifteen percent of the military’s end strength. Some say our work is responsible for avoiding the need for the draft.